ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604050143
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: Reviewed by BOB FISHBURN|
THE STATE OF HUMANITY. Edited by Julian L. Simon. Blackwell Publishers in association with the Cato Institute. $22.95.
If you felt ill, sought opinions from four doctors and two said you had six months to live, while the other two promised you a long, healthy life, you would justifiably wonder about the medical profession as you know it. In addition, you probably would want to believe, perhaps find it imperative to believe, the optimistic opinion. But when it comes to opinions about such issues as world population, food supplies, health trends, the environment and natural resources - about which there is as much disagreement as among those four doctors - the public tends to believe the worst.
"The State of Humanity" is a ringing chorus of good tidings: In absolute terms and in quantifiable measurements, the world is getting better and better in almost every way. The editor puts it starkly: All aspects of material human welfare are improving in the aggregate. Most of the more than 50 chapters by experts in various fields back up Simon's general assessment.
There are, he concedes, many local problems and relative disparities in living standards, but he says a view of the long haul and a concentration on the general picture produce a reason to feel good about the present and upbeat about the future.
Thus the volume, tough going in places because of an eye-glazing number of charts and statistics, is the boomsayer's answer to the omnipresent doomsayers, who, Simon says, have been wrong in all of their bleak forecasts for the past 30 years.
There are problems, of course, with such a starkly positive view of conditions we have perhaps been taught to "view with alarm": nuclear power, the greenhouse effect, pesticides, the ozone layer, acid rain, industrial wastes, species and resource depletion, ad nauseum. Some of the arguments against the gloomy Gusses are a bit glib, and a few of the chapters undercut the editor's smug assurances that all's well and will continue so. The chapter on trends in environmental quality, for instance, hedges on environmental degradation, saying the trends are "varied and uneven." Though it warns against current unqualified predictions of imminent environmental disaster, it nonetheless ends by contending that the demonstrable effects of pollution "surely justify the adoption of effective countermeasures."
Another problem: The stress in the entire volume is on quantity rather than quality. One example: One can argue that the near-miraculous increases in agricultural production are a boon to mankind, with fewer and fewer people needed to grow more and more food. But the long-range effects of losing certain values tied to the land - a sense of community, etc. - and replacing them with the dislocations of urban living are far beyond the scope of this book.
Yet the "quality" considerations may be part of the answer to the plaguing question: If, in measurable terms, things are getting better and better, why is our collective psyche seemingly so bent out of shape? Or, put another way: Why does the public apparently insist on believing only the doomsayers?
Several of the contributors and the editor lay the blame at the feet of journalists who, they say, are competent to cover daily events but woefully deficient in covering issues that demand some knowledge of science and a feel for the intricacies of weighing evidence.
However, in spite of its limited scope and occasional overstatement, "The State of Humanity" provides a medicine chest full of antidotes to the overwrought environmentalists who see a disaster around every corner. We have turned many of those corners with neither bang nor whimper; after a few more uneventful turns, we ought to suspect some political agendas are mingled with the science.
In summary: The good news is that the bad news is based on inconclusive evidence and should not be the basis for broad and expensive public policies. The bad news is that the good news is one-dimensional and should not be the basis for broad public apathy.
Bob Fishburn is former editor of this newspaper's commentary page.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ``The State of Humanity'' provides a medicine chest fullby CNBof antidotes.